Julie Moran Alterio of The Journal News of Westchester County, NY, interviewed me by email in December for a piece on blogging, which appeared Sunday.
The main piece, Web of blogs, is here. For the sidebar, Blogs blur line with journalism, Julie interviews me, Dan Gillmor, Rebecca Blood and Paul Boutin. A second sidebar looks at Financial potential of blogs uncertain.
Because I keep an archived page of Q&As from students and reporters, I’ll add this interview to the list and post the complete Q&A here:
Why did Web logs emerge?
Web logs give voice to the amateur, which is to say, all of us. The pundits, the political elite, the media — all have had their turn in the public spotlight. Now comes a new form of communication and interaction — more informal, less polished, but often more genuine and full of insights and points of view that often escape the conventional punditocracy.
What are the hallmarks of the earliest Web loggers?
The early bloggers wrote about what they knew best: technology and software. The form has only begun to flower in the past year when web logs moved beyond their original moorings into a broader array of
topics: politics, foreign policy, debates over public affairs.
What exactly were you trying to accomplish?
Why did I begin blogging? Simple: to connect with other people. From the moment I dipped my toe into the Web log waters some 20 months ago, I knew this was something special. It’s a daily revelation, a conversation among friends, colleagues and strangers about any topic that’s on our mind that day.
How do Web logs fit in with traditional mass media?
Web logs aren’t a mass medium. They’re a one-to-many medium. But it’s wrong to think of blogs, or the Web, as a communication medium, like a souped-up telephone or a newsletter on steroids. I like John Perry Barlow’s metaphor: ‘The Net is not a channel. It’s the ocean. And that’s a vastly different thing.’
How big is the readership?
Most web logs are relatively small. I get a few thousand visitors a day. The most popular ones, like Glenn Reynolds’ InstaPundit, attract about 30,000 readers daily. But multiply that by the half million blogs out there, and you’re talking serious numbers.
Who is being influenced? How is this influence different than that of the NY Times, say, or other mainstream Web media?
The influence is at the edges. You can see sentiments first expressed on Web logs bubble up into the mainstream media several days or a week after they first surface. Now that Andrew Sullivan, Mickey Kaus and other members of the media elite are active bloggers, the political class and major newspaper columnists have begun to take notice.
The audience for any particular weblog is generally small, often in the hundreds of readers rather than the many thousands at some major news publications. But the freedom and instaneity involved — no filters, few strictures — make the smaller readership worth it.
Are Web logs journalism? Why or why not?
A small percentage of Web loggers are guilty of performing journalism, whether they know it or not. They
Most Web logs aren’t journalism, and most bloggers don’t fancy themselves journalists. But many do perform a journalistic role: they take part in the editorial function of selecting newsworthy and interesting topics, they add analysis, insight and commentary, and occasionally they provide a first-person report about an event, a trend, a subject. And over the long haul, they establish their own credibility with their publishing track record. If they’re credible and have something valuable to contribute to the public arena, people will return.
A few professional journalists (Dan Gillmor, Sheila Lennon, Eric
Alterman) have begun keeping Web logs. I suspect many lower-profile journalists who keep weblogs don’t look upon their blogs as work. It can supplement your work, let you poll your readers, toss a question out into the ether to gain immediate feedback before you harden your position on a particular issue. That’s pretty cool, and quite powerful.
Is there commercial potential? If so, would bloggers shun that? Why?
The vast majority of bloggers don’t gain a dime from their Web logs. Many do it chiefly to carve out a niche for themselves as experts in a given topic. The most knowledgeable expert on the subject of wireless networking, for example, is someone who writes a blog. That carries a certain cache that can be turned to advantage in their writings or professional career. A few bloggers make a few bucks off the tip jar on their site — Andrew Sullivan collected almost $10,000 that way. Others, like Meg Hourihan, have Amazon wish lists that readers sometimes contribute to. And Dave Winer, the founder of Userland, claims that his Scripting News Web log has directly led to tens of thousands of dollars in business for his firm.
Is there a blog “community”? If so, does it have a function in our democracy?
There may not be a single blog community, but there are certainly islands of common interest. If you’re into politics, you’ll run across many of the same names: libertarian Virginia Postrel, conservative Andrew Sullivan, liberal Mickey Kaus. If you like fly fishing, I’m sure there’s a fervent group of fly fish ideologues blogging away at this moment.
On a personal note, what does your blog do for you?
Currently I’m writing a book about intellectual property, Internet piracy and file sharing, so the blog gives me a break from writing the manuscript. Mostly it’s a way to keep in close contact with a circle of colleagues on the issues of the day. And it has begun to open doors. I’ve been a guest lecturer at technology conferences, and an active Web log is almost de rigueur these days.
How much time does it take for you to maintain?
An hour a day, sometimes longer. Some days I’m sure it’s worth the payoff. Other days, the investment is a little harder to gauge.
As a journalist, do you consider your blog journalism?
Again, sometimes yes, sometimes no. When I’m ranting about my PC, probably not. When I’m blogging live from an industry conference, giving summaries of speeches, taking photos of participants and posting it all to the Web in real time — yes, that’s journalism.
I suspect Web logs will increasingly tear the wrapping off of journalism in the years ahead. They have the potential to serve as community and media watchdogs, fact-checking the professionals and keeping us all more honest.
But Web loggers need to learn that they’re not inventing the rules of the road from whole cloth. The conventions of journalism — accuracy, credibility, trustworthiness and being straight up with your readers — are guideposts that any good weblogger should engrave on her wall.
This entry originally appeared Jan. 27, 2003, on my Manila blog.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
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